True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  Over the rail, on the lower level, Rose saw thin women in expensive dresses dancing like grasshoppers.

  ‘Designer beanpoles,’ she observed.

  His gaze followed hers. ‘Pity they’re nearly all growing moustaches. Must be what dieting does to women. Nice clothes, though. Would you like some addresses in the ragtrade?’

  ‘I can find them if I need them. Thank you. Anyway, I’m broke.’ She knew straight away she shouldn’t have said that.

  ‘You’ll make us some pasta then?’

  ‘What’ve you got?’ She followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Fettucine.’

  ‘There’s not enough there.’ She was examining his cupboards with him.

  ‘Lasagne.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to eat tonight.’

  ‘Spaghetti. San Remo.’

  ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Fresh herbs.’

  ‘You’ve got a herb garden?’

  ‘My last wife’s, bless her, though the maintenance is killing me. She had some homely touches.’ He opened a door which led on to a patio poised above a precipice. The smell of boronia and herbs and the sweet sour burden of early honeysuckle greeted her on the night air.

  ‘Nice. Isn’t it nice?’

  ‘The sage has gone to wood.’

  ‘You don’t give much away, do you, Rose?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘You’re lost on Kit.’

  ‘D’you want me to make you some food or not?’ It must be easy for seduction to happen, whatever your perspective. The men and women in there were being seduced in some form or another by this party, and all the parties that had gone before. She hesitated; it was so much easier to be on the inside. A vision flitted before her, of Gamble crouched on the floor of his ministerial car, giggling at her.

  The young woman from Kent State was trying to slice French bread and making a mess of it. ‘Didn’t anybody teach you to slice bread?’

  ‘My mother made bread.’ Stella gave a pouty smile.

  Of course, Rose thought, she would. ‘Perhaps she’ll teach you one day.’

  ‘My mother had a very traumatic life.’

  ‘So did my daughter’s. Long strokes on the diagonal, Stella.’

  ‘Rex is so lucky to have friends like you.’ Stella had decided to be affable after all. ‘You could teach me things when we get married.’

  ‘Who feeds him when there aren’t tame women around?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think he has a housekeeper now and then.’

  ‘Politicians don’t know what life’s all about. Or they forget. You’ll spend all your life in a supermarket queue if you’re not careful.’ She considered adding, if it lasts that long, but it didn’t seem like her province. Her sauce was thickening, pungent and rich. The smell of onions and garlic clung to her hands. It made her oddly comfortable, performing the familiar routines of cooking, although she could see how she debased herself. Or how Gamble was doing it for her. She supposed it was premeditated.

  The smell had infiltrated the room beyond. The dancing had stopped and the dancers were wafting expectantly round the long dining table. When Rose went out to set up a cloth and some cutlery, only Harry was performing a distracted awkward dance with someone who looked like an older version of Belinda.

  Nick was deep in conversation with a woman with light brown hair and an air of competence. Rose could have sworn she had seen her before. She racked her brain trying to think who it was, sure she should know. The woman was drinking orange juice.

  Alan Smart had just arrived, having waited quite properly for the House to rise. Remarkably, he was with his own wife. Mary had had a crisp new tint put through her hair. She wore a business suit, as if she hadn’t had time to change. Somebody said she’d just been appointed to run an international company.

  ‘Is this a delegation from Auckland?’ he asked, looking around and seeing some unfamiliar faces. Smart’s electorate was in the South Island, Gamble was from the north.

  ‘No. Weyville in the raw,’ said Matt, who had been drinking rather quickly for him. Rose thought, too late, that she should have asked him to help with the cooking, but he didn’t look particularly friendly anyway.

  It surprised Rose that Smart was there. From what she had heard, she would have thought that Smart and Gamble were so diametrically opposed that they were unlikely to attend each other’s parties. She supposed that in a world where policies were the game plan and the point was power, it probably didn’t make much difference.

  Harry hiccuped. ‘Home base for the Gucci revolutionaries.’ His voice was thick.

  Kit turned a pained expression on him. And there’s no way you can get rid of him, Rose thought, with what, she had to admit, was satisfaction.

  As she set plates out nobody noticed her much. Most of the people in the room had forgotten she was a guest. Nick tried to catch her eye but she avoided it; the woman he had been talking to was still sitting close to him and she was still sober.

  ‘Don’t go putting words in my mouth, just put your tongue in.’ The osteopath was administering free manipulation to the base of one of the expensive women’s spine.

  ‘Is the Minister of Finance coming?’ Matt was getting bold. Someone had said on the way up that there would be senior Ministers at the party.

  Gamble’s teeth gleamed. ‘Probably. Probably. I expect so.’

  ‘What about Lange, is he coming?’ Smart’s voice was irritable. He poured himself a Scotch.

  ‘Probably. Probably not. I’d say on the evidence, it’s unlikely. I’ve got a can of beans put aside for him if he does.’

  ‘I thought you said he was coming.’ Rose guessed that this was why Smart had come. But now he was here, it appeared unlikely that he was going to hurry away. He had turned back to the bar to get ice, but not a lot.

  ‘I think it’s positively peculiar that his wife doesn’t live with him.’ The osteopath had taken his jacket off; his forearms were like those of a rugby player.

  There was a chattering like crickets in the room:

  ‘She’d be peculiar if she did, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Is it true that he’s got a girlfriend?’

  ‘And I said to her, how do you like your eggs in the morning? And she said, unfertilised. Cute.’

  ‘Is the Minister definitely coming?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Finance, you said Finance.’

  ‘Nothing’s definite in this world. Justice might come.’ Gamble laughed. ‘After all, you’ve got me. Kit, there’s another consultative committee coming up. Are you interested?’

  ‘Does that mean the Government’s got another decision it wants to put off for a year?’ Harry said. He was trying to get Violet to dance and she was resisting, but he had grasped her firmly by both hands and pulled them backwards and forwards as if he was in a woodsawing competition, twitching his body in time to the music. Any moment, Rose decided, Kit would throw him out bodily. Could be sport, she might join in, take Violet with her.

  ‘And he said to me, Julie, he said, why do you try all that feminist shit on me? I mean, Julie, I just look at you, and I just about cream in my pants. It takes all sorts, I said to him, we’re all feminists at heart, we women. I mean, would you like me to stop shaving my armpits or something, I said to him.’

  ‘The Report on Social Policy, my dear, was five thousand pages thick, and so wet it was printed on bark. Read it? Of course I haven’t.’

  ‘Darling you must see Ellie Smith, she’s divine. What? I know you can see her on the Lotto ads but she’s doing Judy Garland.’

  ‘No, I don’t have a system for Lotto but my brother has, you can cover the odds for eighteen grand. Why don’t we form a syndicate?’

  ‘I’m a Luddite, yes, all right that’s what I am. Right, Matt? Eh, Nick? Never thought I’d say it, but yes, I want to go back to the old days.’ Harry was looking increasingly morose. Nobody had offered him another drink for ten minutes, and he was not quite dr
unk enough to help himself with Smart’s familiarity at the bar.

  ‘The barbie, oh it was a wash-out. There was a bunch of Islanders playing their bloody boong music on the beach. Not that I’m racist or anything, but we asked them to tone it down, nicely of course, but they didn’t. Well it was just that we couldn’t hear a thing. I mean, truly, I do like Islanders, one of them did some work for me the other day. But noise. I mean noise is pain to me.’

  Gamble passed, patting the speaker’s bottom on the way. He said, ‘Never, darling. Pain is a high brain function.’

  The kitchen was hot. Stella had been drinking the cooking wine. ‘It’s too good to put in the sauce,’ she said, holding the label out toward Rose.

  ‘Never cook with wine you wouldn’t drink. How’s the bread?’

  ‘Yummy, I’ve tried it. You are wise. You will be my friend, won’t you, Rose?

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind. My friends don’t have a lot of luck.’

  ‘Did Rex say if the Finance Minister was coming?’

  ‘He said somebody might.’

  ‘Oh I do hope so. Though he could have gone gambling, I’ve heard he does. Mind you, if he came here he’d be gambling, wouldn’t he?’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘That was rather good, don’t you think.’

  ‘Very good. Yes, that’s very funny.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re nice to me. Not everybody is, you know. That Mrs Smart out there, she’s not. She’s really moral. I could tell her things about morals. My parents are really moral. They live in Blackball.’

  ‘That’s certainly moral. How’s the spaghetti? Have you tried it?’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Al dente. We’re ready to go.’

  ‘Marvellous. Thank goodness you came.’

  ‘I’ll tell them you cooked it.’

  ‘Will you? Oh gosh, really, that’s nice of you. I can make blackberry wine, you know.’

  A temporary quiet had descended. Everybody except Violet was eating. Harry looked almost sober.

  ‘Shouldn’t we have waited for the Minister?’ asked the osteopath. He twirled spaghetti with a deft elegant hand, surprising at the end of his brawny arms.

  ‘We’re all waiting for the Minister,’ said Harry. ‘We’re waiting for him to do something.’

  ‘Just where do you people from Weyville stand?’ said Gamble, leaning back and wiping his mouth on a napkin. Rose wondered if she should tell him that there was a strand of spaghetti in his beard. ‘Or, more importantly, where does the member for Weyville stand?’

  ‘Good point,’ Alan Smart said. ‘What I’d like to know too.’

  Rose thought, Amen to that. The question had got repetitious, one way or another.

  ‘Here, I’m not on trial,’ Kit said. He helped himself to more spaghetti. Rose remembered how difficult it was to get him to eat pasta at home. He always said he didn’t like it.

  ‘Stella made it,’ she said, though not necessarily to him. Nobody was listening.

  ‘Actually,’ Matt said, speaking to Kit, ‘you probably are.’

  ‘Some friend you turned out to be.’ Kit was still making light of it.

  ‘What say we convene a court? All those in favour say aye.’ Gamble’s face shone with excitement.

  A chorus of ayes went up.

  Nick half rose to his feet. Faintly, he said, ‘No.’ He looked across to Rose. She found herself shrugging, why not?

  Kit had turned pale and stopped eating. She thought, this is my husband. We have two children whom we love. We’ve worked hard together and lived in an L-shaped Beazley house. (Well maybe we don’t now, but we did, and we were happy.) We believe in the same things. We come from Weyville, where we will grow old together.

  Only some of the argument fell apart. Looking round at the glittering gathering, the public relations consultants and newly respectable Treasury men, the assortment of instant names, the political commentators who would not dare to repeat exactly what happened in this room tonight, but who would find ways to make very good capital out of it all, she realised that each and every one of them saw themselves as true stars in their own right, entitled to spectacle. As she and Kit had once perceived themselves to be stars.

  ‘No,’ she whispered, but only to herself.

  Kit had regained his composure. He picked up his fork and commenced eating spaghetti bolognese again.

  ‘What’s the charge?’

  ‘Conspiring with the loony left,’ said Gamble.

  ‘Selling out to the right,’ Harry and Matt said, more or less at once.

  ‘Who are the witnesses?’

  Violet picked up her handbag. ‘You’re all nuts,’ she said and walked out.

  ‘Fancy, and you never even got to read a charge,’ Gamble said, addressing Rose. He was watching Violet’s departure.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Harry. He picked up a bottle of wine and shoved it under Kit’s nose. ‘South African.’

  Smart moved uncomfortably, looking sideways at the bottles accumulating around the room, but he was still drinking Scotch, even with his pasta.

  ‘It won’t do, Rex,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not on trial,’ Gamble said. To Harry, he said, ‘You’ve been drinking it too, mate.’

  ‘You only brought it out when we began to eat, so we wouldn’t notice. Kit, look at it, see what he’s doing to us.’

  When Kit didn’t stop, Harry tipped the remains of the bottle he was holding over his head. A little sizzling sigh went round the room. Kit put out his tongue to catch the drops running down his nose.

  ‘You don’t give a damn about mining the reserve.’ Harry was trembling, his eyes full of fervour.

  ‘Perhaps Prebble might come,’ the osteopath said.

  ‘You’ve sold out to capitalism.’ Matt’s voice was aggrieved.

  ‘Who d’you think’s going to run the world?’ Gamble asked him.

  ‘Who do you?’ Smart said.

  ‘Well I tell you, it won’t be your mate, the member for Weyville, but he’s in with a chance if he sticks with me.’

  The woman with brown hair was jotting something in a notebook.

  ‘You’ve got to stand up for yourself,’ Smart said to Kit, quite kindly. ‘You get too upset when they heavy you in caucus.’

  Gamble said, ‘A bit of rough and tumble. He can take it, can’t you?’

  ‘He nearly cried when Finance heavied him a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Bully-boy tactics. There you are.’ Harry was triumphant.

  ‘That was one of the girls,’ said Kit, going on the defensive at last.

  ‘That’s it. Guilty of being a girl,’ Gamble cried. ‘I tell you lot, you’re born losers. You think Lange’s got a conscience. You think he might take charge again. I tell you it won’t happen. We’ve got the country on the right path, thanks to the Minister. If he goes we’ll all go down the booby hatch. You stick with Lange and you’ll find yourselves in Siberia when he gets thrown out. It’s one or the other, none of you can have it both ways much longer. I know where I stand. I know which side the proverbial bread is buttered on.’ His voice had risen to a high and excited pitch.

  ‘Are you the judge?’ Nick asked, speaking at last.

  ‘Yes, yes I am.’ With that Gamble snatched Kit’s half-empty plate and upended it on his head. Strands of spaghetti and sauce trickled down over his ears.

  Applause broke out. Nearly all the audience was laughing so hard that tears streamed down their faces.

  ‘Oh dear, and I was still hungry,’ said Kit politely.

  ‘There, get him some more Stella. If there is any. It’s very good, angel.’ He patted Stella’s bottom as she made her way to the kitchen. In a minute she emerged with the pot.

  ‘It’s gotten cold.’

  ‘You don’t mind, d’you old chap? Here.’ He handed it to Harry. ‘Would you like to do the honours this time?’

  ‘But I still don’t know the verdict,’ said Harry, puzzled.

  ‘Ask him.’

 
‘Your charge or mine? Ours?’

  ‘I’ve given mine. This one’s yours. Are you a hanging judge?’

  ‘Kit, how do you plead?’ Harry begged.

  Smart said suddenly, ‘Hasn’t this all gone far enough?’

  ‘There’s a ministerial car along the road,’ said the osteopath. He had been watching down the hill.

  ‘Not guilty,’ said Kit softly. He looked at Rose through the spaghetti strands. ‘Not guilty, your honour. As of now.’

  The osteopath said, ‘There really is a ministerial car.’

  Harry looked down at the pot. ‘Then I guess this is just to keep you on the straight and narrow from now on.’ He plonked the saucepan on Kit’s head. The remains of the meal cascaded down over his shoulders and tie and into his lap. Kit sucked some strands in at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You’re a fool, Kendall,’ said Gamble, ‘but I admire your spirit. Bravo.’

  More clapping followed and one of the beanpoles switched on more music, Madonna belted out with ear-splitting splendour.

  Stella was crying. ‘I want to sit on a rock-hard dick and come twenty-five times,’ she said between sobs.

  Matt and the woman with brown hair fetched towels as the door opened. A messenger had arrived with regrets from the Minister, but in the bedlam nobody caught which one it was that couldn’t make it.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Nick was standing at Rose’s elbow.

  For a moment she thought of staying to help Kit clean up, but it was too late for that.

  ‘Great movie,’ he said, as they found their way down the path.

  ‘That’s what I thought. Pity we forgot the jaffas.’

  ‘Where to now?’ They were in his car. He looked up the stairs as if expecting to be followed but there was nobody in sight.

  ‘Now?’ She was blank for a moment. ‘Back to Sharna.’

  It was nearly midnight. Fog had descended on Hataitai. Haloes of light flickered in the trees, the perfect V-shapes of the roofs and the innumerable spindly balconies outlined in the gloom. In the laundrette Nick and Rose folded napkins as they came out of the drier. Welfare had bought Sharna a set of new ones which gleamed in an icy pile under the harsh light. They had sent the sitter home. ‘The child has no clean napkins,’ the sitter said in an aggrieved way, as if Sharna was neglected. Rose had forgotten that babies got wet so often. She insisted that they walk to the village; she would die without fresh air she told him, and more or less meant it. They wheeled Sharna, still sleeping in her collapsible pushchair, down the hill together. Sharna, always sleeping.